Annoying your friends with arguments about antagonists vs. villiains
Authors laying down cosplay challenges
Being a sass-mouth in the face of mortal peril
Learning about colors
Accidental knife mischief
Magical interior decorating
Looking fabulous as you destroy all who oppose you
Playing dramatic movie soundtracks while you do mundane chores
Tea time

Fact one: the flu is a terrible, terrible thing that I had managed to dodge the entirety of my life. UNTIL NOW.

Fact two: the flu ate my February. You’d think you’d have time to write but no, the only thing I had the energy for was staring blankly at YouTube.

Hence, no entries for February. But here I am now, full of returned vigor and using a considerably lower amount of tissues each day!

Here’s a quick post to tide you over: Victoria Schwab’s new book, A Darker Shade of Magic, is out and it is hot. I have the ebook version that I am going to curl up with tonight but here is a chance to win both a hard copy version and a poster of the gorgeous cover art!

January. JANUARY. A month of new gym memberships and weather patterns in the South where it can be 60F on Wednesday and 20F on Thursday because we don’t understand how Winter works!

I am typically very fond of New Year’s Resolutions but I’m giving them a bit of a miss for 2015. Instead of making myself some semi-achievable goals I did the following:

1. Got a big ol’ calendar (like this one but cooler looking) that shows the whole year at once. It’s nice because it helps you see your time better when you can see the next month and realize “Oh, I don’t have March plus whatever infinite time lays beyond it, I’ve got three and a half weeks” when planning things out.

3. I cleaned out my closets which, uh, doesn’t really have a lot to do with writing? But it was fun and it felt good?

And most importantly, I’m reading and writing and at the moment I’m reading about writing. That is the worst possible segue I could manged to move into a review of 500 Ways to Write Harder by Chuck Wendig.

First things first: if you’re not reading Chuck Wendig’s blog YOU REALLY SHOULD. IT’S THE BEST. Okay, yeah, I mean some other blogs have their insight into the craft of writing and offer wise advice that can be applied to life at large but do they swear in their posts? Do they invoke such imagery as the following thoughts on the new year:

The ideal state would be that we change when we need to, not when the calendar suggests it, but let’s also remember that the holidays and the transition from one year to another are vital times to reflect. We build up to the orgiastic rush to Christmas, and then are left with a startling, almost shocking void — all that’s left is cleaning up the wrapping paper and throwing the Christmas Hobo on the bonfire. Ha ha ha, I didn’t say Christmas Hobo, you said Christmas Hobo. I said tree. Christmas tree.

Well, I think he’s funny.

Anyways, on to 500 Ways to Write Harder. All of the advice and self-help books that I’ve read have a feel to them. Some make me feel like I’m sitting at a desk in a lecture hall, worksheets spread out before me. On Writing by Stephen King feels like a long walk down an Autumnal, leaf-littered nature trail while King quietly relates the stories of his life and the wisdom garnered throughout his career. Wendig’s Writer Harder is a night at the bar spent playing poor and heckling the karaoke singers and a friend turning to you and, with a sloshing gesture of their drink, saying “Let me tell you a thing.”

500 Ways to Write Harder is broken into collections of 25-ish points about subjects such as Bad Writer Behaviors, Things to do Before You Start Your Novel, 25 Steps to Edit the Unmerciful Suck Out of Your Story, 25 Ways to be a Happy Writer, and 25 Ways to Get Your Authorial Groove back among many others. This format works out because you can read it section by section intermittently or, if you want a refresher, go back to a specific area and re-read with ease.

Just as there is no single way to approach writing a story, Wendig offers occasionally opposing pieces of advice to let you find your own path. He also advocates that all writers need to care for their mental health which I super-appreciate because I loath the romanticized notion of artists being inherently broken.

[ASIDE: If you feel that you are suffering from anxiety, depression, whatever, please seek help. Treatment will not steal your muse or wreck-up your creative nature. Athletes aren’t expected to “suffer for their craft” by running on broken ankles; artists don’t need to endure mental torment to do their artist thing.]

500 Ways to Write Harder is sharp and wickedly funny. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing at Wendig’s advice as much as I was silently nodding along at all the sage wisdom he was dishing out. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

Seek consistency and clarity in point-of-view, lest you confound and bewilder, lest you seem like the king of amateur-hour karaoke. Hell, seek consistency and clarity in all of your writing. Also, in your take-out orders. because you think you ordered a “ham and cheese sandwich” but then you open the bag and suddenly your face is on fire from a thousand stingers and you’re like OMG THEY MUST’VE THOUGHT I SAID HAM AND BEES.

Like I said, sage wisdom.

The advice is advisory, the humor is humorous, and he make two Avatar: the Last Airbender references which makes Wendig one of my new best friends. Get the book, read the book, then get back to writing.

As previously mentioned in my last blog post, I had every intention of participating in the 2014 run of National Novel Writing Month, or as the I’ve been informed the kids are calling it these days, The NaNos.

And, uh, so I am participating in the 2014 run of National Novel Writing Month. Huh, that worked out nicely didn’t it? Look at me and my holding to a promised action! I’m like some kind of functioning human being! PRAISE ME.

Anyways. We’re at the mid-point of National Novel Writing Month and so far, so good-ish. I’m about four thousand words behind at the moment due to missing a few days because that whole Life thing insists on continuing even when I ask it nicely to pause for a month. But only a few thousand words isn’t that bad in my NaNoWriMo history! It’s practically on schedule except for the part it isn’t! This upcoming week is going to be my mad push to reach 40k before Thanksgiving so I can, for once, not have to worry about frantically pushing out twenty-three thousand or so words in the last four days of November.

So far this has been my most successful NaNoWriMo. Honest to gravy this is the first time I have actually and factually pinned down an ending to a story before working on anything else and woah dang howdy, I will never attempt another story without doing so. The fact that I have an end point to work towards, or at the very least an end conflict, makes it a lot easier to piece together the fiddly middle bits that have to connect the beginning with the end. I’ve got myself a main character, she’s got herself a little sister, there are class mates and magical abilities and categorical divisions that eventual fans will be able to identify with and buy merchandise based on them. It’s going to be brilliant, I tells ya, and I’m enjoying the process so far.

But let’s jump back a month, shall we? Travel back to October with me when everything was beautiful and I could fart around making sure a 500 word piece of flash fiction was just so for days on end. O, the halcyon days!

Back in October I bought a Humble Book Bundle [see note at the end of this post for a correction], which if you’re not aware of this being a thing that exists, OH MY GOODNESS LET ME TELL YOU A THING. The Humble E-Book Bundle offers you, go figure, a bundle of themed books for a price that you name. There is a base price (which is going to be stupidly cheap for the amount of books you get) that will net you a handful of e-books in various, DRM free, format or as the case is right now, a bunch of audio books. However, if you pay above the median price you unlock another handful of books that often include a big name author to help sweeten the pot. When you pay you can choose how much of your money goes towards the authors, towards the selected charity that has been connected to the bundle, and how much goes as a “tip” back to the Humble Bundle makers themselves. If you’re feeling flush with cash and make a big donation you even get your name on a leader board! Whee, recognition!

The first bundle I bought was a collection of what I think of as “Writer’s Self Help Books” and which for the love of all things adorable I cannot find right now on the Internet @#$%!!! I’ve perused these books and their promises to teach me to write a novel in 30 days/Three Weekends/Fifteen minutes but I’ve never taken them seriously.

Until now.

*cue dramatic music*

From now until I’ve read them all, I will be trying out each of these writing aid books and seeing what shakes out from following their direction. Some are more literal step-by-step guides to produce a manuscript while others are more tips, tricks, and viewpoints from an already successful author. I’ll have a review up each month to let you know my experience with each book.

First up is going to be No Plot? No Problem!A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty. Technically this wasn’t part of the Humble Bundle, but hey, I wanted to be thematic for the whole National Novel Writing Month thing I’ve got going here.

(Yeesh, six hundred words to get to the review. It’s almost like I’m trying to pad some sort of word count or something…)

Chris Baty is the head-honcho of NaNoWriMo. He started the event among a close group of friends and developed it into an international event that invites all comers to bang out a fifty-thousand word novel just to prove that they can reach into themselves. It gives people the excuse to dust off the story that they had always promised they would write “one day” but never thought they could really write, and lets them write it out in full. No Plot! No Problem? Gives readers the history and ideas behind what NaNoWriMo has become today as well as giving loads of guidance on how to accomplish a fifty-thousand word novel in a single month.

If it helps your personal journey, Baty is not totally beholden to the month of November. If that time frame doesn’t work for you then he would be delighted if you picked a more preferable month and held your own, personal NaNoWriMo. The whole theme of the book is that all one needs to do for a successful NaNoWriMo experience is to simply sit down and write. Hit your daily word requirement with no excuses and to the exclusion of your normal daily life. Tell your inner editor to hush and get the story out.

No Plot? No Problem! Itself is a light-hearted collection of advice on how to NaNoWriMo including where to write, how to set a writing mood, how to prepare without burning yourself out, how to put aside any attempts at editing, and how to manage real life responsibilities whilst churning out 1,667 words a day. There are tips from former NaNoWriMo participants and a week by week guide to lead you through the month.

It’s a surprisingly funny book. I wasn’t expecting to laugh out loud (or as the I’ve been informed the kids are calling it these days, lol) at a book about NaNoWriMo, but Baty has a sharp wit when relating his own writing experiences.

“Things went awry almost immediately. With nothing to do all day but write, I found myself doing everything but writing. Essential errands were run. Laundry was done. The bathroom was cleaned. Less essential errands were run. The bathroom was re-cleaned. A complex rooftop Habitrail system designed to make tree-to-tree transitioning easier for the neighborhood squirrels was built and nearly installed before the county’s animal services intervened. And so on.

The mounting guild I felt each evening over accomplishing so little writing during the day would then force me to cancel the plans I had made with friends that night. So I could stay in and get some writing done.

Night, of course, simply involved more work on the Habitrail.”

Per my own personal preferences, the advice offered in No Plot? No Problem! Neatly skirts the line between Solid, Practical Writing Advice and Tripping the Muse Fantastic nonsense. I have absolutely no patience with the idea of my character running away with the plot I have designed for them because oh goodness, don’t those characters have a mind of their own~! No. They don’t. They are mine, wholly and totally, and will serve the purposes I set out for them. Perhaps I am not a very whimsical person? Maybe I need to buy a prism or something. That being said, it’s very easy to heed the advice you want and skip over the advice that doesn’t apply to you. My eyes flitted over the small section about how to choose a Writing Totem but I lapped up every bit of the time management tips offered.

The week by week advice is my favorite portion of the book. It’s 75% carrot and 25% well-applied stick. Baty will cajole, encourage, and praise NaNoWriMo participants for making it this far and do his best to convince readers that if they just keep putting one foot ahead of another, they’ll make it through the month with their fifty thousand word count complete. He gives little booster exercises and both accepts writer’s frustrations while offering paths to move past them. This section is very similar to the weekly encouragement emails that NaNoWriMo participants receive and I’ve always found them to be a nice little life line. After your NaNoWriMo summit has been reached there is even a little bit of guidance in regard to editing that beast of a manuscript.

Overall, I recommend No Plot? No Problem! As a read. If you’re a serial NaNoWriMo participant than buy it, and if you’re a writer just seeking overall advice then I super-duper-recommend you get it from the library at the very least.

OH HEY WAIT I FOUND THE BOOK BUNDLE! Okay, turns out it is a Story Bundle, which is different from a Humble Bundle even though they both work the exact same way with their you-name-it price levels and donations to charity. The National Novel Writing Month bundle is still available at the time of writing this entry (click here) if you wish to partake. I would keep an eye on the Story Bundles for sure because they are a super cheap way to beef up your e-book collection. Now that I’ve scanned over both it looks like Humble Bundles are more games and comic selections.